


The Flat Above the Wheezes

by gliminalspaces



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:21:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26709712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gliminalspaces/pseuds/gliminalspaces
Summary: All is not well in the flat above the Wheezes. Ginny's determined to get her brother's shop up and running before he loses it for good, but George's refusal to help complicates matters. Add on the ghosts of her previous year at Hogwarts, handling her grieving family, and the Harry Potter of it all, and it's starting to feel like she's in over her head.
Relationships: George Weasley & Ginny Weasley, Harry Potter/Ginny Weasley
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	1. One

There was a stain on the ceiling of the flat above the Wheezes.

Ginny wasn't sure how long she'd been staring at it, but the fact that she had watched it change colors with the rising sun suggested it had been far too long. Her eyes were heavy in her head and her head was heavy on her shoulders. But her mind knew better than her body that sleep wasn't all it was cracked up to be. So instead, she studied the stain. From the increasingly faded circles along the edge of it she concluded that whatever it was had been bubbling when it made contact with the ceiling. She pictured her brothers shouting in half-distress, half-excitement as they scrambled to contain it.

It made her smile. 

She shifted until she was sitting up in the armchair she was using for a bed. She was more tired than ever. However, George would be up soon and no matter what emotional state he was in, there was no way her finely tuned Weasley instincts would let one of the twins catch her sleeping.

_One of the twins_. Ginny sighed.

The thought wouldn't send her spiraling, not anymore anyways. Back at the beginning of May it would have her feeling miserable and out of sorts. But now, several weeks out, she had a higher tolerance for reminders of her late brother. Still, if she didn't get her mind off the topic soon, that fog was going to settle in her head for the rest of the morning. She curled up against the back of the armchair, pressing her forehead into her knees. Eventually, she did doze off that way, but it wasn't long before she was rudely awakened.

"Go home, pest," George grumbled, lifting the back of his armchair in an attempt to tip her out of it. "Before I have you hauled off by the aurors."

Ginny shrugged and stretched her arms high over her head, rolling her shoulders to loosen the crick in her upper back. Feet together, she flattened her knees to either arm of the chair and pressed herself tight to the plush, brown fabric. When her brother came to the realization that she wasn’t budging, he dropped the chair in defeat. The resulting rocking was violent enough to make her cling to the arms to keep from falling.

“The aurors are busy,” she said brightly. “If you want me out, you’ll have to fight me yourself.”

He sighed. “We were too nice to you growing up, gave you a big head.”

They were equally aware of how ridiculous that claim was, so Ginny didn’t bother disputing it. She trailed behind her brother as he made his way into the kitchen.

“I assume you’ve made yourself useful and whipped something up for breakfast- like a good little unwanted houseguest.”

Ginny snorted. “I’ve been here for two weeks; I don’t see why I’d start now.”

She prepared her tea and toast in silence. As she sat down to eat, her eyes hovered on George, who was fixing himself a more elaborate breakfast, then lingered on the food on the stove.

He rolled his eyes. “Yes, there’s enough for you, too.”

Breakfast was quiet, as it usually was. George hardly spoke nowadays, and while Ginny tried her best to be chipper and uplifting and all that other rubbish, it mostly came out irritating to the both of them. So, she'd learned to embrace the silence. A couple of times, she would lapse into small talk before thinking better of it and trailing off. Those times, her brother would smile and muss her hair, like he appreciated the effort but equally appreciated the surrender. 

The washing up was hers to do. She'd never fussed much over it, afraid that if she did, he would give in without giving her a hard time and of how that would feel. He did sit at the table until she was done. Quiet and withdrawn, but at least he was there.

Looking at George, you'd never guess he slept for hours on end. Mum always said the twins were all Prewett, and now Ginny could see it in the tightness around his eyes. She could barely picture her uncles but when she did, she thought about the newspaper clipping her mum kept tucked away in her nightstand. The somber-faced photo accompanied their death announcement. War heroes, the paper called them.

It was fitting that George most resembled them now.

"Oi." 

She blinked when she felt a finger flick the side of her head. 

George smirked. "You're staring."

She shook her head, marveling at the fact that she hadn't noticed him get up from the table. "Pardon me," she quipped. "It's just that I've never seen anyone quite so hideous before."

Oh.

It was an old joke of theirs- one that usually ended with Fred as the punchline, jumping out and declaring that he hadn't either, only to be spooked by a nearby mirror. It hit Ginny a moment before her brother recalled the same thing. George's eye sort of twitched.

Ginny lunged for the kitchen sink, certain she was about to be ill. She heaved once and then stopped, leaning over the sink until she could identify the feeling in her stomach as grief (and a little guilt) instead of nausea.

George yanked on the back of her jumper until he had her manhandled into a chair. "Sit down before you fall, yeah?"

He filled a glass from the tap, and Ginny accepted it gratefully. She'd downed half of it before George fell into the seat across from her.

"So that happened," he observed.

"Shut it," Ginny breathed, taking long sips of water.

When the water was gone, she desperately searched for something else to look at, anything else so long as it wasn't George's face. She came up empty and eventually met his eyes. Her brother had an empty smile on his face and was looking at her much too softly for her liking- like she was a little lost first year, stuck in the trick step.

"It's time to go home, Ginny," he said. He'd said as much dozens of times over the past week, but something in his tone made this one different. "I'm fine now."

She frowned unconvincingly. "I know you're fine, what does that have to do with anything?"

Rolling his eyes, George kicked her under the table. "You came here with me so I wouldn't be alone in the flat-"

"No," she recited dutifully. "I came here to help you get the flat cleaned up-"

"I had it magicked clean by the time you managed to drag your trunk up the stairs.”

"-so that I would have a quiet place to catch up on my studies-"

"The only books you brought have brooms on the covers."

"-and for some third reason mum told me to say that I can't remember right now."

“To keep you out of her hair,” George supplied, grinning wryly.

She huffed. “Yes, that one.”

The custom clock above the fireplace tolled twice and they both turned to watch as a tiny version of George popped out and announced the odd hour. They both dreaded the evens. George sighed.

Her thumb sought out the slight line of the scar on her collarbone. It was fairly recent, just barely scabbed over when she got off the train for Easter break, but she’d settled into the habit of rubbing it when she got nervous, like it had been there for years. She could feel George’s eyes following the movement and dropped her hand into her lap.

“I could help you get the shop opened up,” she offered eventually.

He waved her off, already getting out of his chair. “Don’t worry about that. Sod it. When mum wants you home, she can drag you back by your little toe for all I care.”

She trailed behind him, rubbing at her temples when he stopped abruptly and flung open the door to the hall closet.

“George, what are you doing?” she asked, resigned. She was not running on enough sleep for whatever this was shaking out to be.

The door swung closed with a bang. Ginny jumped back and winced as the sparks flew from the keyhole and the gap near the hinges. _Don’t be nutters_ , she begged her brother silently. _Please be doing some kind of normal magic alone in the coat closet, I don’t think I can take anything else._

As she was contemplating blasting away at the hinges, the door opened again. Curious, she crept closer. A hand stuck out through the hanging cloaks and grabbed ahold of her, yanking her inside. Ginny stifled a shriek.

“George!” she complained.

But she shut up quickly when her mind finally registered what she was seeing. The closet had been expanded to be about the size of her bedroom at home and the color looked to be a near perfect match as well. There was a soft rug that bore a suspicious resemblance to the wrapper to a Ton-Tongue Toffee spread out on the floor, and the whole room was flooded with natural light, coming from a window on the far wall. There was a wooden crate in the corner, stamped with bold red letters that spelled out, ‘NOT TO BE SOLD TO F&G WEAS. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.’

Her brother was smiling as he clapped his hands over her shoulders and shook her slightly. “What do you think?”

Eying him pointedly, she prodded at the dangerous-looking crate with her toe. 

"Don't open it," George advised. "That is, if you're emotionally attached to your fingers and would like to remain physically attached to them as well."

Ignoring that, Ginny moved to the window and tilted her head at the bustling view of Diagon Alley below. "I thought the loo was on the other side of this wall. Where's this window to?"

George's eyes lit up and a slow grin pulled across his face. For a moment, Ginny was thirteen again, huddled behind the locked door of the twins' room and sworn to secrecy over a new invention. 

"Anywhere you want!"

He moved in swiftly and tapped his wand firmly to her forehead. Ginny grimaced and swatted him away, but she stilled when she caught sight of the window again. The pane misted over and when it cleared, they were looking out over the Quidditch pitch from school, faceless players zooming in the distance. She moved closer and ran her fingers over the glass just as a chaser dressed in red sank the quaffle through a green-guarded hoop.

George snorted. "Figures. You'll have to get someone to bring a bed over. Transfiguration isn't my thing, and you don't want that popping out from under you in the middle of the night."

"Transfiguration isn't your thing?" she repeated, gesturing wildly at the room around her. She shook her head in disbelief. Though she'd always known the twins were far more capable than they let on, this was nothing short of amazing. She was touched that he went to such great lengths to make her comfortable considering he didn't want her there in the first place.

"I'm afraid so," George teased. "Just wait until those cushions turn back into my old quidditch pads."

Sputtering in pretend horror, Ginny tried her best to dodge his arm, but George managed to wrestle her into a headlock anyway. He mussed her hair rather thoroughly before disappearing through the hanging cloaks and robes and out the closet door.

She smiled. Things were looking up in the flat above the Wheezes.

-

Not long later, George was off to do what he described as 'none of her nosy little business.' When questioned, he stated that he would return 'before she starved but not by long' and that she should 'think very hard until she found a way to make herself useful and then try that for a change'. Nonplussed, Ginny had waved him off and decided to use the afternoon to go over some of her sixth year coursework.

Despite her brother's teasing, she had brought her textbooks with her. Normally, she was avidly against the idea of schoolwork in the summer, but the amount of school-related information she learned and retained from the previous year could fit on the back of a chocolate frog card. That didn't sit well with her. The memory of arriving at Hogwarts her second year and being profoundly behind the others in her classes stuck out in her mind. The feeling was awful and she would do anything to keep from repeating it. 

She'd floo'd the Burrow first thing, to ask her mum to send her bed over and let her know that George wouldn't be tossing her out on her arse anytime soon. Her mum agreed right away, missing her daughter but happy that someone was there to keep a proper eye on her grieving son. She got the impression that her mum thought she did a lot more cooking and cleaning and comforting than she actually did. Try as she might, she couldn't muster up any indignation at the assumption. Maybe that was what she ought to be doing, considering she had precious little else to do with her time. The thought made her feel rather useless and more than a little guilty.

So schoolwork was starting to seem more and more appealing.

Ginny was halfway through the third chapter of her charms textbook when the floo fired up and spat someone out onto George's awful paisley throw rug. It was what she had been waiting for all morning- a visit from someone at the Burrow. But still, the air stuck in her chest and her fingers wrapped hard around her wand.

“Ginny?”

_Harry._

She’d expected Ron or maybe her dad. She hadn’t expected Harry. The surprise was slight but it was apparently enough to completely disconnect her mind from her mouth.

"Come in!" she urged, internally cringing upon the realization that he was very much _in_ already. "I mean...you should sit down."

"I should?"

"Unless you-"

"No, I will!"

He looked around the flat, eyes falling on the two armchairs in front of the fire. One was covered in her revising, scraps of parchment stuck in between the arm and the cushion. The other had a blanket thrown over the back, embroidered ‘F’ standing out in a flat now filled with ‘G’s. She wondered if he could tell it hadn’t been touched since the twins fled to Muriel’s.

After a moment’s hesitation, he flung himself down to the floor, sitting cross-legged on the rug and leaning back against the coffee table. She grinned and joined him there.

“I’ve never been here before,” Harry said. He was eyeing a nearby footstool with a healthy mistrust. “I was expecting something a bit more…elaborate.”

“And dangerous,” Ginny added. “I know what you mean. It looks like normal people live here.”

It really did. The flat’s large picture windows were covered with heavy, velvet curtains in a shocking shade of purple, and the fixtures in the kitchen and bathroom were golden and shaped like various jungle animals. But other than those and a few other small accents, there were few traces of the twins’ enormous personalities. White walls, wooden floors, and a massive brick fireplace dominating one wall.

“It feels a little strange,” she admitted. “Like all my memories of them were just them putting on a show for the rest of us. I don’t know much about what they were like when it was just them.”

She winced, once again unimpressed with her conversational ability when it came to Harry Potter. For one thing, she was talking like she’d lost two brothers instead of one, and for another, she was prattling on about her feelings to the most repressed person she’d ever known.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

Harry, who’d wandered away to take a closer look at the gallery wall of bizarre amateur paintings at the end of the hall, turned and frowned. “For what?”

Shaking her head, Ginny drew her knees up under her chin and used the opportunity to really look at him for the first time in ages. He looked good, she decided. Healthy even. He’d lost weight, sure, but she’d had to shrink the shorts she was wearing two sizes before they would catch on her hips so she wasn’t one to judge. And he’d clearly been enjoying the special kind of sun that seemed to only shine on the Burrow. But the most noticeable difference was the way his head didn’t sink into his shoulders like they were made of quicksand. She’d seen him with his head held high before, but he could never sustain it for long before another rug was pulled out from under him. She could only hope that he’d finally made it down to bare but steady floorboards.

“Oh! Before I forget!”

He dug through his pocket and unearthed a tiny, shrunken bed which he placed gently in the palm of her hand. Ginny squinted at the unfamiliar bedframe.

“This is-”

“Percy’s,” Harry nodded. “Yeah. Yours is…erm…”

“Hermione’s using it,” she finished absently, fluffing the miniature pillow with the pad of her pointer finger.

“Yes!” he cried, sounding oddly relieved. “That’s right, Hermione’s using it.”

Odd.

Ginny got to her feet and placed the bed safely on the mantle, studying Harry out of the corner of her eye as she moved across the room. Maybe he wasn’t doing as well as she thought. She knew he’d hate to hear her ask it but suddenly the urge was too strong to be shoved down under the rest of her feelings.

“How are you, Harry? Honestly?” she asked softly, fully prepared to be patching a Harry-shaped hole in the wall when he inevitably turned tail and bolted.

He paused and seemed to genuinely consider that, which was far more than she had even hoped for. She shoved her revising off of George’s chair and sat down, squashing herself against the left arm.

“Come here,” she urged. “We can share.”

Harry watched her notes flutter to the ground as he settled in next to her. His thigh pressed against hers, and she was thankful that he couldn’t feel her gooseflesh through his jeans.

“What I think I’ve landed on is…strangely grateful,” Harry said slowly. “I know things are sort of-”

Ginny supplied an appropriately vulgar adjective.

He smiled. “Yeah. That. But while I was away, I kept imagining all these awful things I could be coming back to.”

“Like house elves with dark marks and me married off to Gregory Goyle?”

Harry snorted, shoulders shaking with stifled laughter. “Yeah. Addressing you as Mrs. Goyle would definitely be rock bottom for me.”

“Don’t laugh!” Ginny cried, smiling widely. In actuality, hearing him laugh again made her feel like she did scoring a goal in front of her classmates- delighted and secretly more than a bit pleased by the approval. “I could do worse than Goyle. Not by much, mind you, but if I’ve learned anything at all this past year, it’s that things can always get worse.”

She half-expected another laugh, but Harry was looking at her oddly. His hand moved to cup her knee.

“I feel like I don’t know anything about what last year was like for you,” he said.

_Because you don’t._

_“_ Not much to tell,” she lied easily.

“Really?”

“Tell me about the lovebirds,” Ginny demanded. She reluctantly pulled away and jumped up from the chair. She threw her arms out dramatically as she tried to think of something suitably cloying to describe her brother and his new girlfriend. “Is the glow of their admiration for each other as radiant and inspiring as it was when I left?”

“I’m inspired to stick my head down the loo and flush whenever they speak to each other, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Ginny grinned. “That counts. I suggest you stock up on ear plugs before the three of you go traipsing off to Australia.”

“I’m not going to Australia.”

“You’re what?” she frowned.

“Not. Going. To. Australia,” Harry said slowly and clearly, like he was explaining arithmancy to a blast-ended skrewt.

“Oh. Huh.”

“Yeah.”

“I just thought-”

“Well, you thought wrong,” he smirked, shooting up to dodge the kick she aimed at his ankles. “They’re going away, and I’m staying here. So if you need anything, I’ll be around.”

“If I need anything…” Ginny repeated.

Harry nodded.

She frowned. “What exactly would I need?”

“I don’t know!” he exclaimed. He squinted at her, eying her like she was a storm and he wasn’t sure if he ought to be securing the shutters. “I’m just telling you!”

“Well, I don’t have any bloody idea what you’re driving at, that’s what I’m just telling you!”

She blew out a long, slow breath as she realized she was getting angry over something that wasn’t really worth getting angry over. It was a miserable feeling, especially now that she was living with George, who was the only one of their siblings who didn’t inherit their mum’s filthy temper, save Bill possibly. It made her feel out of control in comparison. Maybe she _was_ out of control because while she sort of understood why she’d kicked off like that, the intensity of her reaction had been unexpected.

Harry paced in front of her. His mouth was tight and frustrated, but his eyes were confused, like he couldn’t figure out exactly how he’d gone wrong. “I’ll leave then, if that’s what you want,” he said heatedly. He took a few steps vaguely towards the floo, without any real motivation to make it there.

A puzzle piece rattled inside Ginny’s head. It was dusty from a year of disuse but it felt good when it finally slid into place in her ‘things she’d figured out about Harry’ puzzle.

“Harry, are you asking because you want an excuse to come back here?”

“No,” he said too strongly. “I just didn’t want you to need something and not…” He gestured wildly with his hands, trainers moving a floorboard or two closer to the fire.

Ginny smiled.

“Well, if I need something, I’ll probably just take care of it myself. But I could let you know if I wanted something. Like if I wanted you to come over and…be here sometimes?”

He’d been looking like he was still unsure about how things had devolved, but Harry brightened when she said that, the way he always did when she put something into words so that he didn’t have to. It felt good to know that after all their time apart they weren’t as lost to each other as they could have been.

“I’d like that,” he said kindly. “I want to come over and be here sometimes, too.”


	2. Two

Her conversation with Harry had left her with restless energy too massive to be kept in the flat. Venturing out into Diagon Alley on her own wasn’t something she had ever done before, but she was almost seventeen and there was no one there to stop her. So Ginny pulled on her trainers and locked the flat up behind her.

It was too soon for the rush of returning Hogwarts students. Without them, Diagon Alley was quiet. She didn’t have a destination in mind but from the look of things, her options were limited. The entrance to Ollivander’s was badly damaged, door half-obscured by pummeled stone and dust. At least half of the storefronts were still boarded up, but Florean leaned through the window to give her a friendly wave.

Despite the bleak surroundings, it felt good to give her legs a bit of a stretch. The sun made her eyes crinkle in discomfort as she looked for a place to get out of the street and settle for a moment. The secondhand store her family had shopped at for years called to her from across the alley- safe and familiar in a way things hadn’t felt for a long time. The bell over the door chimed when she entered. Ginny winced when the other patrons turned to look at her.

“Well, look what we have here…”

Someone snaked their arm around her shoulders. Before Ginny could think, her elbow shot back sharply, hand wrapping around her wand. Luckily, Mrs. Rutterman sidestepped just in time to avoid being struck.

“Sorry!” Ginny said urgently. “I’m so sorry!”

The old shop owner smiled. “You always were a plucky one, little miss Ginny.”

Ginny grinned back, though guilt twisted hard in her chest. Mrs. Rutterman had owned the shop for longer than Ginny had been alive and she had always been a friend of the Weasley family.

“Tell me about your mother,” the older woman ordered. “How has she been faring?”

“Mum’s alright,” she answered as she was being dragged behind the counter by the arm. A stool appeared behind her. Ginny dutifully perched herself on top of it and accepted the candy Mrs. Rutterman unearthed from her pocket and pressed into her hand.

Mrs. Rutterman snorted and readjusted the quill holding her hair out of her face. “I’m sure she’d never let anyone think any differently.”

“No,” Ginny admitted. “I suppose not.”

They chatted a while about Ginny’s family and the Rutterman’s only son who had graduated Hogwarts two years earlier. Yes, Ginny agreed that her father worked too hard and that Nelson ought to write his mother more now that he lived in Belgium.

“He asked after your brother in his last letter- said he wrote to offer his condolences but never heard back, not that there’s any trouble in that.”

She winced. “George has had a lot on his mind.”

Ginny suddenly wanted more than anything to be shut up in the flat above the Wheezes, so much so that the idea of a five-minute walk home seemed unbearable. She wanted to run, to skip the pleasantries and take off, but she was certain the news of her impoliteness would get back to her mother before she got as far as the magical menagerie. She pushed herself onto her feet and pointedly eyed her watch.

“I’m sure he does,” Mrs. Rutterman nodded, seemingly unaware that Ginny was looking to make a move. “You let him know that if he needs any help getting open before the deadline, I’ve done this all before.”

“Deadline?”

“For the revitalization! There’s quite some time left, of course, but if he hasn’t already, he’ll want to pay a visit to the goblins for his share of the putting-things-right funds.”

Frowning, Ginny feigned interest in some nearby boots that were probably old enough to qualify for an apparation license three times over. She was positive George hadn’t been anywhere near Gringotts this summer, unless it was to sit on the bench outside and avoid conversation with her and everyone else. Across the shop, a customer called for assistance with a rack of flapping, feathered hats that had banded together and created a swarm. The elderly shopkeeper rushed off to disband them.

“Mrs. Rutterman!” Ginny called, wincing as one of the hats was propelled into the wall by an aptly swung cane. “Some time left before what?”

“August the fifteenth, dear. The organization responsible for Diagon Alley development wants everything up and running by then. Any shop that doesn’t comply will have their lease terminated. It’s part of the revitalization effort- bad for property values to have these storefronts sitting empty.”

“So if George doesn’t have his shop open before August fifteenth…”

Mrs. Rutterman stopped consoling the hat-pecked customer long enough to send Ginny a sympathetic look over her shoulder. “Then he won’t be opening it back up at all.”

Flustered, Ginny nearly collided with three different pedestrians on her walk back to the flat. After the third threatened her with a heavy looking handbag, she decided to step into a nearby alleyway and collect herself. Her face felt hot, and while the midday sun certainly wasn’t helping matters, she didn’t think that was the cause.

_Was George going to lose the shop?_ It meant so much to him. He’d always been so proud of the legacy he and Fred had built from the ground up when they were barely eighteen. The twins had never seemed as sure of themselves as they were once they had achieved the title of business owners. _Esteemed proprietors of Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes._ They’d signed every letter sent to her during her fifth year that way.

Her stomach flipped as she pictured the shop boarded up or _worse_ , taken over by some stuffy imported cauldron shop.

Ginny breathed deeply, focusing on slowing her racing heartbeat.

She was getting worked up over nothing. George had this all under control. She was certain of it.

_~_

Harry tumbled through the floo, covered in soot and disgruntled to realize that he had an audience. On the sofa opposite the fireplace, Hermione sat with her nose in a book and her feet in Ron’s lap. She nodded vaguely in his direction. Next to her, Ron yawned.

“You were gone for ages,” he observed. “Negotiating your tip?”

Harry turned out his pockets for show. “Not very well it seems.”

“Yeah, Ginny’s rotten like that,” Ron said, grinning fondly.

There was a restless energy ticking in his chest. His visit with Ginny had gone better than any of the very few interactions they’d had before she’d gone off with George. It felt foolish to cut their time short while his tongue was finally untied and Ginny was giving him that smile that made his stomach flip. But Harry was deeply aware of the fact that he had nowhere to be which could easily lead to him wearing his welcome thin.

He slumped into the armchair nearest to Ron and leaned to snatch a leaflet off the floor.

“So, what have we learned about memory charms?”

Hermione’s lips flattened until they disappeared, but she didn’t look up from her book. “We have learned,” she started bracingly, “that memory charms are very difficult to undo. And that you shouldn’t place them on the people you love.”

Harry winced. “Research not going so well, then?”

When it seemed like Hermione was content to mumble something affirmative and go back to her reading, Ron gently pried the book from her hand and stuck it down between the sofa cushions. Harry frowned harder but Hermione just sighed, seeming more relieved than affronted.

“Not as well as I had hoped,” she admitted through a miserable smile. “But it will be easier to wrap my head around once I actually have them in front of me.”

“Did you get your portkey arranged?”

Ron nodded. “Week from tomorrow. You’re sure you don’t want to come along, mate? Has to be better than being stuck here all day with just my mum.”

At the mention of Mrs. Weasley, Harry’s eyes were pulled to the staircase. Ron’s mother spent the majority of her time in her bedroom with the door pulled shut. She claimed to be knitting when anyone asked, but the tiny blue square that would supposedly become Teddy’s first Christmas sweater never seemed to grow. He knew the rest of the Weasley’s were worried. Percy stopped by often, two sometimes three times a day, and the excuses for his visits were getting thinner and thinner. (He’d been over that morning, claiming he needed help with the first-year spell used to reattach buttons.) Mr. Weasley was working long hours at the newly reformed ministry but he seemed to know when Ron’s mum had an especially reclusive day, even though he wasn’t there to see it.

Harry felt strangely anxious at the idea of her being alone at the Burrow if he were to join Ron and Hermione in Australia. He wondered if Ginny felt the same way about George.

“Positive,” he said certainly.

He could tell by the way Hermione was looking at him that she had put her concern for her parents to the side and focused in on him. Her lips were twisted into that thin little smile that never meant anything good for his pride. “I’m sure Harry will find something to occupy his time while we’re gone.”

“I’m sure I will,” Harry said, face feeling very hot all of a sudden. “Maybe I’ll finally get around to branching out and making some new, better friends-”

But Hermione would not be deterred. “Tell us how things went with Ginny. Did you ask about spending some more time with her?”

“Yes, eventually she realized that’s what I was asking.”

“Because first you asked her…”

“…a question that made her angry. Let’s leave it at that, alright?”

“Oh Harry, we talked about this! You knew what to say!”

“I did know what to say! But then I got there and it just…came out different.”

“Did she hex you?” Ron asked eagerly. “I’ve been waiting for her to do that. You want her to get it out of her system, mate. The longer she stews in it, the worse it’s going to be for you. Have I ever told you about the time I ate her Easter candy and she didn’t get back at me until August?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Ginny’s not angry with me.”

He didn’t think she was anyway. Granted, they hadn’t exchanged more than a few dozen words before this afternoon. But that was mostly because he didn’t know what to say to her and it seemed like Ginny was hardly talking to anyone but George. He was almost certain she wasn’t harboring any hard feelings towards him. She’d clung to his hand at Fred’s funeral and while she’d been tense in his arms as the Weasley’s received the mourners, she _had_ allowed him to hold her.

The pitiful nature of that thought hit him as soon as he had it. _Yeah, that’s truly promising. She didn’t have it out with you at her brother’s funeral. She’s clearly madly in love with you._

Ron shrugged. “It’s your nose, mate. I’m just trying to mitigate the size of the bats.”

Harry shuddered at the thought.

He really hoped he was right about Ginny not being angry with him, for more reasons than one.

_~_

“George!”

George looked up from where he was fiddling with the wireless and idly shook his wand at her. “Where were you? Did I give you permission to go somewhere?” He grimaced, like the question left a nasty taste in his mouth. “ _Can_ I give you permission to go somewhere?”

She waved him off, used to older brothers mistakenly thinking they were the boss of her. “Obviously not. When were you going to tell me about August fifteenth?”

He blinked once and opened his mouth, to lie to her she was sure, but Ginny slammed her wand down on the table and fixed him with a look that she hoped conveyed how terrible that plan would be.

“Ginny…” He sighed, eying Fred’s old chair warily before lowering himself into it. “Come sit down. I didn’t want to do this just yet, but I think I should tell you about what’s going to happen with the shop.”

Her heart hammered against her chest. He didn’t need to say anything, she knew what was coming by the look on his face and it wasn’t what she had been expecting when she walked through the door. She’d anticipated some sheepishness and maybe an admission that he wasn’t being as responsible about reopening the store as he maybe should have been. But this sounded like…

“You’re closing it!” she shouted, distantly recognizing that her temper was flooding in to numb the hurt.

“I know you’re not going to be happy about it, but this is my decision.”

Ginny scoffed and stomped closer to her brother. “You’re not making a _decision_ , you’re giving up!”

George didn’t flinch, raising one infuriating eyebrow at her. “If I am, that’s my right.”

“You don’t have the right to be so INCREDIBLY STUPID-”

“HEY!”

His voice echoed so loudly that the flat seemed to shake for a moment. Ginny’s eyes snapped open wide. It was so rare for George to raise his voice in anger that it took her a moment to process what had happened.

“Sit down.” George snapped his fingers and pointed at the armchair opposite him. “And calm down. Start yelling again and I’m walking away.”

Reluctantly, Ginny sat, balling her fists at her sides. She choked down a deep breath, feeling it stutter in her throat on the way down. The last thing she wanted to do was sit down, but George had threatened to walk away and she knew that he would. She’d seen it done. One of the rare blow out rows she’d witnessed between the twins had ended that way. George had given his warning and when it was ignored, he disappeared up the boys’ staircase. Fred spent hours that night complaining to his sister, who nodded along in sage, thirteen-year-old wisdom.

Ginny’s hands shook at the memory.

“Alright, then?”

She nodded, eyes on the floor. Suddenly, the pattern on the rug began to move, and Ginny realized that her brother was using his wand to pull her chair closer to his. He didn’t stop until she was staring at his mismatched socks on the floor next to her bare feet. The sound of him taking a deep breath, his much steadier than hers had been, made the gnawing guilt that always resided in her stomach creep partly up her spine.

It really wasn’t fair to be yelling at George.

“Ginniekins…”

Her head snapped up to scowl at him, but she couldn’t go through with it when she saw him smiling at her.

“It’s alright that you’re angry,” George said softly. “I’m angry at me too.”

“George.”

“No,” he said. “I am. I wish I had it in me to go back in that store and be the person I used to be, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.”

“It doesn’t have to be soon!” Ginny urged. “We can help, you know. You don’t have to do it by yourself.”

He laughed, and she had to suppress the urge to visibly cringe. She didn’t hear it often but his laugh was different now, gnarled and reedy. The feel of it sat uncomfortably in her chest.

“Aren’t you the one that charged in here a second ago, reminding me about how soon it would have to be?”

“Yes,” she said, a little defensively. “But you wouldn’t have to jump in right away. I could…I could get it running for you, and then Verity could run it until you’re ready.”

“You have absolutely no idea what you’re volunteering yourself for.”

“I’m _volunteering_ to keep you from making a mistake that you’re going to regret later.”

George scoffed, aiming a gentle kick at her chair. “It’s a lot more than that. Do you know how much work it would take to get that place put right again?”

“No,” she admitted. “Not a clue. But I don’t care. I would do it. For you.”

_And for Fred._

Sighing, he stood up and stepped away, absently adjusting a picture on the wall instead of looking at her. Ginny’s heart sank.

Finally, George turned around and jabbed a finger at her.

“I don’t want you pestering me about this,” he said sternly.

She sat up a little straighter, wondering if that meant-

“If this is how you want to spend your last summer before you graduate, that’s your own special kind of nutters. Don’t come crying to me when you realize you’re in way over your little freckled head. Gah!”

He’d been unprepared for her to fling her arms around his neck. George sputtered and tugged on the end of her plait but after a second of necessary protest, he relaxed into the hug and thumped her on the back.

“Pity I didn’t know sooner, I could have had years of you doing all my-”

He yelped and jumped away when she drove her toe into his instep.

In the morning, the magnitude of what she’d gotten herself into would register more clearly. At that moment, Ginny was thrilled to have some purpose to her days. A feeling she could tentatively label as ‘uselessness’ had set in around Easter, and while it briefly abated with the end of the war, it was prone to resurgence when she was left to her own thoughts for too long. It felt good to have a direction for her energy. On top of that, her heart preened at finally having a way to help George.

Granted, she knew she couldn’t do it all by herself. She needed some help. And she knew just where to find it.


End file.
